One of the questions on the programme was "What is the common denominator between Superman and Canterbury?" The answer was Kent - surname of Superman's alter ego and the county where Canterbury is located. Before that came up, I thought Reeve would be the answer - Christopher Reeve played Superman and the Reeve's tale is one of the Canterbury Tales. It highlighted for me a problem with this format. With a conventional quiz it's possible to write questions so that there is only one correct answer but with Common Denominator it is not possible for the researchers to be sure they have identified the only valid link. I wonder what would happen if a contestant gave an answer which was valid but not the one Phil Spencer had on his card - especially if it was during the final money questions.

Peter McNamara wrote:One of the questions on the programme was "What is the common denominator between Superman and Canterbury?" The answer was Kent - surname of Superman's alter ego and the county where Canterbury is located. Before that came up, I thought Reeve would be the answer - Christopher Reeve played Superman and the Reeve's tale is one of the Canterbury Tales. It highlighted for me a problem with this format. With a conventional quiz it's possible to write questions so that there is only one correct answer but with Common Denominator it is not possible for the researchers to be sure they have identified the only valid link. I wonder what would happen if a contestant gave an answer which was valid but not the one Phil Spencer had on his card - especially if it was during the final money questions.

If you protested the decision, they'd presumably have to do a partial retake and splice the things together.

Peter McNamara wrote:One of the questions on the programme was "What is the common denominator between Superman and Canterbury?" The answer was Kent - surname of Superman's alter ego and the county where Canterbury is located. Before that came up, I thought Reeve would be the answer - Christopher Reeve played Superman and the Reeve's tale is one of the Canterbury Tales. It highlighted for me a problem with this format. With a conventional quiz it's possible to write questions so that there is only one correct answer but with Common Denominator it is not possible for the researchers to be sure they have identified the only valid link. I wonder what would happen if a contestant gave an answer which was valid but not the one Phil Spencer had on his card - especially if it was during the final money questions.

If you protested the decision, they'd presumably have to do a partial retake and splice the things together.

I'd hope and expect that they'd be accommodating to alternative answers as long as they're still correct. Other quiz shows do this. Only Connect, for example, once had a missing vowels round where the connection was "business terms" (or similar) and the clue was "NTCST". One of the players (I seem to remember it was Dave Taylor, but I might be wrong) answered "net cost". The answer on the card was "unit cost", but "net cost" was considered to be just as valid an answer so it was accepted. The same happened once with the aircraft "TGR" which was meant to be "autogiro" but they had to accept "Tiger".

Innis was just on the University Challenge: Class of 2014 documentary (part 1 of 2) which follows students trying to win a place on the quiz, not sure if Innis and his team mates passed the audition but they seemed a strong team, so I would expect so, tune in tomorrow to find out.

Jojo Apollo wrote:Innis was just on the University Challenge: Class of 2014 documentary (part 1 of 2) which follows students trying to win a place on the quiz, not sure if Innis and his team mates passed the audition but they seemed a strong team, so I would expect so, tune in tomorrow to find out.

Just caught up with this - awesome work from Messrs Binnie and Carson. Generally a pretty fair and balanced reflection of what goes on I think, considering the potential they had to just do a massive hatchet job on everyone. Got to agree with Michael though, Innis - Darjeeling, smoking a pipe, pervasive notions about the spatial and temporal nature of empire... wow.

I was quite interested by the focus on City University, London, as this was where I worked for a spell between my PhD and coming out here. I even went as far as getting in contact with the chap organizing the team for the 2013/2014 series to see if I could help out, but that never came through (and neither did the team, for that matter). Strange to think if I'd stayed there a little longer I might have ended up popping up on this!

Possibly of interest only to a few but Series 55 finalist Andrew Blades was on Ken Bruce's Popmaster last Thursday. I don't want to give too much away but he was pretty bloody good (the 3 in 10 section is especially impressive). It should be on iPlayer until at least the start of December (fast-forward to 59 minutes for the start of round 1, Andrew was the second contestant starting at 1 hr 9m 20s if you just want that).

Tremendous effort chaps, I thought at one point it was going to be a massive win for the challengers when you took out the big guns Pat and Kevin, you did yourselves proud, well done. Dave saved the day for the Eggheads